In an effort to provide quality rootstocks for fruits and nuts, we, the inventors, typically hybridize and test a large number of almond seedlings each year. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of peach-almond hybrid tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘Lillian CVI’.
During the spring of 1988 we crossed several ‘Titan’ (unpatented) almond trees with peach pollen. This hybridization was accomplished by carefully isolating alternate trees of the ‘Titan’ almond with several different peach rootstocks. The ‘Titan’ almond is self-sterile, so the peach rootstocks provided the only available pollen source. That fall the hybridized seeds were gathered and planted as a group in our nursery. Most of the seeds sprouted in the spring of 1989, the young seedlings were then budded to commercial almonds that June, and the resulting trees were transplanted as one of about four thousand trees in our cultivated almond orchard the following winter near Merced, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). After years of observation, the present variety was selected by us as a single plant from the group described above because it showed to be much more vigorous and healthier than its sister seedlings. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of peach-almond hybrid tree, we asexually reproduced it using tissue culture techniques for further testing and evaluation as a potential rootstock. These reproductions revealed that the tree and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. Such reproductions were transplanted into our test orchard located a few miles from the original tree and were carefully evaluated. After showing several outstanding characteristics, we determined the variety to have commercial value as a prunus rootstock.
The present variety is similar to its selected seed parent, ‘Titan’ almond by producing almonds that are sweet in flavor with a thin, well sealed shell, but is quite distinguished therefrom by being much more vigorous, by being more tolerant to saline soil types with high ph conditions, by having a much stronger root system for better tree anchorage, and by being a peach-almond hybrid instead of a pure almond.
The variety is most similar to ‘Arthur V’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 18,782) by being a peach almond hybrid tree that is utilized primarily as a rootstock for prunus varieties, somewhat nematode resistant, deep rooting, and self-sterile, that has globose leaf glands, and that produces almond-like fruit, but is distinguished therefrom by being more vigorous, by being more tolerant to excess water, by being more drought tolerant, by being more tolerant to saline soil types with high ph conditions, by being less productive of its own fruit, and by having fruit that matures in August instead of September.